[RFC] Links vs Buttons

[eps1lon]

Opening this to be filled with arguments why or why not buttons should look like anchors.

We accidentally merged a change that enforced the distinction partially. Any decision we do make should be applied consistently. The button vs anchor discussion is already hard to follow. We shouldn't make it more complicated by applying different stances throughout our docs.

#22780 enforced different visuals for links in the nav menu but didn't make a proper argument why.

[oliviertassinari]

#22780 enforced different visuals for links in the nav menu

Regarding #22780, the motivation was to make it easier to understand where a user is in the navigation. Am I on an intermediary level I can drill down into or am. I on a leaf I can open? The motivation is identical to the different visual a folder explore has in different OS, e.g. macOS.

So I think that it's more a concern for the tree view.

It also coincides with the introduction of more layers of nesting in the documentation: #22692 that makes navigation disorientation's problem now more relevant than before.

components > lab > date/time > date picker

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Any decision we do make should be applied consistently.

Regarding the documentation, considering the direction is to support multiple themes and that we are redoing the branding to be non-material design-based, one option would be to update the whole design of the documentation to move away from material design too, only keeping Material Design for the Material Design demos of this specific theme.

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Links vs Buttons

Regarding button that can look like links and the other way around, I think that we need to support both, end-users are used to seeing both. For instance in GitHub:

[samuelsycamore]

Is this issue still relevant in late 2023? It's not clear to me what the discussion is about.